As of 18 hours ago, public had caught wind that a prominent civil rights leader who has claimed to lead a life of poverty, abuse, and harassment as a black woman is in reality a white woman. Rachel Dolezal, who has repeatedly given vague statements about her race, has been outed by her parents who state her background is primarily German and Czech. Rachel Dolezal has been living a life that has not been hers from her childhood to casting off her two adopted brothers as her sons.
The reactions has been all over the place. From those who are encouraging Rachel to live the life she wants to those outraged at the level of deceit. The hashtag #transracial has seen to spiked along with #CaitlynJenner with those asking, “If Jenner can do it, why can’t Dolezal.”
Someone hold me because my brain cannot simply wrap around a “racially fluid” world whose barrier is semi-permeable.
This is hands down one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever heard of in my life. What is it with these blond ladies taking benefits for people of color and pretty much stealing them? This woman has a very nice career in academia, Elizabeth Warren has certainly parlayed her make-believe ancestry into great success. But this is ugly and bizarre no matter how you slice it.
I have come to the conclusion that she has a mental disorder, because who would do this? The sad part is, she couldve been down for the cause as a white woman. As a matter of fact, she wouldve been very helpful to the organization as a white woman.
@Niquii77 now you know there are some Blacks that look like her, and they are getting the side-eye big time, right about now…lol
That’s funny!
My son has had a friend since preschool who is biracial. Dad is black, mom is blond. Daughter is medium skin toned and has blue eyes and blond hair with the texture of Dad’s. To say that she is gorgeous is an epic understatement. Their extended family is the very religious black culture, where the ladies wear hats to church every Sunday and are referred to as “Miss ___” so the child is black, but there have been remarks that she isn’t really black and will get an unearned advantage in college admissions. People like this crazy woman should be ashamed.
@zoosermom not sure if you are on Twitter, but folks are already questioning Soledad OBrien, really???
Its funny my stepdad is VERY FAIR, with hair that would be considered more Caucasian than Black. My kids thought their papa was White until they were like 10.
You know, as weird as I think this is… part of me is impressed by her sheer level of dedication. Here I can barely brush my hair in the morning and this lady changed her whole race every day.
I get the feeling that there’s a weird, and not very nice, vibe between Rachel (how would Peel’s Mr. Garvey pronounce that name I wonder :D) and her parents.
It’s wrong that she was lying on Facebook and all but it still feels like a major betrayal for her parents to “out” her. It seems vindictive. There’s got to be more to that story.
This is the #1 trending story on the Washington Post with 800 some comments. She got a full scholarship to Howard University saying she was a black woman. Now she’s the head of the Spokane NAACP. (Has a white person ever been a head of a local chapter of the NAACP?).
In the past mixed race people were able to ‘pass’ as white. Now she wants to pass as black. Fluidity in race, fluidity in gender. You are what you identify as, I suppose.
Did Howard’s application ask if she were black or if she identified as black? I thought in college applications it was the latter. After all, they don’t do DNA tests or ask for a full genealogy on college apps. Perhaps with all her adopted siblings being black, she felt black also.
I just pose these as questions to consider. I don’t advocate lying about your race, gender or anything else.
There are deeper issues to this story folks, not the least being the clear estrangement between Ms. Dolezal and her parents.
My first response was, why is anyone upset that she identifies with African-American culture? Is that a bad thing? I guess white folks (and some Blacks) are suspicious when a “white” person takes interests in the Black American condition. It wasn’t that long ago that such people were subject to hatred and worse. Just ask Viola Liuzzo’s family. She was murdered for supporting civil rights in the South. One more thing, the NAACP seems to have had no problem with Ms. Dolezal. Lest we forget, there were a number of whites among the founders of the NAACP and today many whites remain members of that organization, including a Italian American former co-worker of mine and a wealthy Caucasian Jewish stockbroker I met.
Finally, as Skip Gates as taught us, there are a lot of people in America whom are not as white as they believe.
Fluidity in how we identify, interesting. After all, don’t many of us ‘self-identify’ in terms of age? Or at least try to appear to be an age that we are not? So for race, Obama selected ‘black’ on his census form when he is mixed race. You are what you say you are.
“My first response was, why is anyone upset that she identifies with African-American culture? Is that a bad thing? I guess white folks (and some Blacks) are suspicious when a “white” person takes interests in the Black American condition.”
That seems to be an odd first response. I can’t imagine that anyone cares one single bit about what culture she identifies with. I personally don’t even have an issue with her remaking herself over to appear black, people are free to do what they choose. However, she has pretended to be an abused, harassed, impoverished black woman. She has repeatedly filed fake hate crimes claims with the police. She has claimed that her parents abused her (which is probably why they outted her). She has gotten jobs and a full scholarship, based upon pretending to be black. Now those things are offensive (should those accusations be true), not that she identifies with the African-American culture.
Shoot, if she wants to be abused, harassed, impoverished, and have hate crimes committed against her, all she has to do is move to many Middle Eastern countries and come out as a Christian. That would be far easier, and she wouldn’t have to wear a wig.
“I was born a poor black child.” Anyone else remember that reference?
I’m disappointed that I opened this thread. Last night, I got a notification from Netflix that Orange is the New Black’s third season was being released early “for good behavior” (very clever) and was hoping that someone had already started an OITNB marathon and was reporting on it.
Oh, for sure! My dad is pretty fair. My Extended family jokes that if they didn’t see my mom have me they’d think I wasn’t hers.
I saw a tweet saying all biracial a had their black card temporarily removed until their authenticity could be verified. :))
I see no problem with white people being a civil rights leader or even taking part in a lot of black culture, but it’s another game where you claim to be black and tell stories of hate and abuse that didn’t happen to you.
@Pizzagirl You wouldn’t be disappointed if you read the entire thread title. Feel free to make your thread, though. I’ll be on it shortly.
Feel free to make your thread, though. I’ll be on it shortly.